The Black Man's Burden - in Black and White

By Kobina Amissah-Fynn

The Black Man's Burden – in Black and White

As the title suggests this book is about the black man, those in sub-Saharan Africa or else in the African diaspora. By extension, however, it is also all about the marginalized, disadvantaged, oppressed, traumatized, downtrodden, dehumanized and aggrieved segments of the world's population. Not only does this include the dark-skinned inhabitants in different continents of the globe, it also counts with the diverse remote aboriginal and indigenous groups, many nomadic tribes, low-caste untouchables, the displaced and dispossessed, and even women (who have traditionally been victims of harassment, sexual misconduct and gender-based violence in almost all cultures). The plight of all these disparaged categories of hapless people is exemplified in the book, to one extent or the other, by the burden and experiences of the black man (not just in tropical Africa but Afro-descendants in the Americas, the Caribbean or elsewhere in the world).

 

In that sense, the book is not really about race, but the painful experiences of diverse peoples, epitomized in this book by the people of African descent. Theirs is a story that, sad as it is, has remained untold to the full, a story that continues to unfold in daily news items highlighting their sufferings and victimization from unlawful killings, police brutalities, mass incarcerations, unfair judicial systems, institutional racism, racial profiling, discrimination, and all forms of inequities and mistreatments, a story for which the "Black Lives Matter" mantra has lately become a rallying cry of all the abused ones of the earth.

 

While the historical, legal, social and political perspectives of the black man's misfortune are generally well understood, even if at a superficial level, the religious dimensions do not seem so obvious to most. Yet the deeper causes of the black man's travail are religious - the reader might be a surprise to learn.

 

To religion then this book turns, not only to explore the causes and circumstances of the black man's travail but also in search of the ultimate solution.

 

In summary, the book is both about the travail of this branch of the human family, the black man, but also about the triumph of the human spirit and of the human race as a whole. So in that sense it is a book about the entire human family and its forward march towards an inclusive world community, a community characterized by love, mutual understanding, reconciliation and wellbeing for all.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  The author does not write about black and African people as an "outsider". He is a full-blooded black African himself and hails from Cape Coast in the south-central coastal region of Ghana in West Africa. Cape Coast is where one of most prominent slave castles of Africa is situated. Known as the Cape Coast Castle, it is even on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.  Thus Cape Coast played a crucial role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

He is familiar with issues blacks are generally confronted with, having travelled widely across Africa, met blacks in Brazil and Colombia, and experienced what blackness means while visiting or sojourning in other continents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hope Books
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393732471

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The Black Man’s Burden – in Black and White

Kobina Amissah-Fynn

THE BLACK MAN’S BURDEN – IN BLACK AND WHITE

Copyright © K. Amissah-Fynn 2020

All Rights Reserved

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Judaism: Thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven; the earth feared, and was still, when God arose to judgment, to save all the meek of the earth. Selah. (Psalms 76:8-9)

Christianity: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:3-5)

Islam: And We desire to show favour to those who were brought low in the land, and to make them spiritual leaders among men, and to make of them Our heirs. (Qur'an 28:5)

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

I. Black Woes

II. The Superpowers

III. The Poor of the Earth

IV. Times of Restitution

V. Out of Darkness into the Light

VI. Messianic Myths

VII. The Comforter

VIII. The Blessings of Blackness

Preface

Issues of race, and especially about the black race, can at times be quite sensitive. It becomes even more so when outsiders, those who are not black (enough) and hence do not experience the sort of misery and despair black people face day to day in their lives, attempt to delve into black issues, to make sense of black sensibilities, to offer their pennyworth of advice to blacks, or make known their personal views on blackness. More so when such interventions appear to make light of black grievances, or to fall far short in reflecting or aligning with legitimate black concerns while seeming to reinterpret them.

For this simple reason, it might be worthwhile to declare up front that the present author is a full-blooded black African. He hails from Cape Coast in the south-central coastal region of Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) in West Africa. It is a region inhabited by the Fante (or Fanti) ethnic group, a group which is itself a subset of the Akan people—the largest ethnic group in the country, spanning a huge chunk of the southern regions of Ghana and even spilling over into the south-eastern part of neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire. The Ashantis (or Asantes) and Fantes are two of the largest and best-known groups of the Akan family.

Some of the more prominent slave castles of West Africa can be found in the Fante area—including the stately Cape Coast Castle and the no-less imposing 1482-built Elmina Castle (the oldest existing European edifice in sub-Saharan Africa and largest slave dungeon in West Africa). It might be pertinent to add that both castles are on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.

In other words, the Fantes were at the heart of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, many of them being carted off to the New World—the Caribbean and the Americas—and some of their traditional chiefs and people would undoubtedly have been complicit in the trade as well. It is estimated that about a tenth of all the trans-Atlantic slave trades that occurred could have taken place in the area of the Gold Coast, with a substantial number of those traded being Akans.

But it was not only for their obvious connection to the slave trade, both directly and indirectly, that Fantes are remembered in the annals of present-day Ghana. In signing the Bond of 1844 to voluntarily place themselves under the protection of the British against invading Ashantis from the hinterland, the Fantes played a key role in opening wide the door for Britain to peacefully settle and initiate a long process to colonize the territory which gradually grew from the original Gold Coast to encompass the boundaries of today’s Ghana.

One peculiar trait amongst the Fantes is their adoption of foreign (usually British) surnames or the anglicising of their traditional names. This distinguishes them from most other ethnic groups in Ghana. The author’s hybrid surname is a small case in point.

This book has been conceived as a modest contribution to the ongoing and never-ending debate on the negative experiences of black peoples the world over.  

Kobina Amissah-Fynn

September, 2020

Introduction

This book is about the black man. Man is used in a generic sense, so in its broadest terms it is about the dark-skinned peoples around the globe, both male and female. Most groups falling under this definition would of course be found in sub-Saharan Africa, but they would also include people of black-African descent scattered around the planet, most notably in the Americas and the Caribbean. Black peoples could of course also refer to the Aboriginal and first nation populations of Australia as well as the dark-skinned inhabitants of some of the islands of the Pacific, such as Papua New Guinea, the Indonesia province of Papua, Solomon Islands, etc.  

In a more general sense, the issues discussed here could equally apply to the disadvantaged and oppressed minority groups in diverse parts of the world, not excluding the indigenous inhabitants and native peoples of North and South America as well as some tribal and nomadic peoples in Asia as well. The same issues might even resonate with women in general, they who are often the victims of discrimination, oppression, repression, harassment, sexual misconduct, gender-based violence and male control. Nor can the poor, marginalized, downtrodden masses of mankind, of whatever race or nationality, be omitted from this short list.

In that sense, the discussions of this book are not strictly about race and the compartmentalization of mankind into the well-known racial camps, not about singling out any group of people for blame and criticism.

To keep the narrative focused, the unpleasant experiences of all the above-mentioned disparaged groups of people are represented in this book, to one extent or another, by the experiences of the black peoples of African descent, those still on the continent of Africa and others dispersed in former and in more recent times into the diaspora. Theirs is a unique story, and in the story is an enduring message for humankind as a whole, irrespective of colour, country, caste or creed. Nor is the story only about the trauma, the tears, the travail, the trials, the tribulations and troubles of this distinct branch of the human family, the black man; it is more generally also about the triumph of the human spirit and of the human race as a whole.

In that sense it is a book about the entire human family and its forward march towards a new kind of society, towards a global community that is characterized by love, mutual understanding, reconciliation, compassion, tolerance, peaceful coexistence, unity and wellbeing for all.

In particular, the narrative looks at the ways the various black experiences of the past, both positive and negative, have combined to transport humanity to a new dimension of reality, a dimension that is spiritual in essence and can best be understood in light of the promises and expectations of the diverse religious traditions of mankind.

All biblical quotation in this book would have come from the King James Version.

I. Black Woes

To Africa can be traced the origins of Homo sapiens—the species to which all races of modern man belong—so scientists postulate. This conclusion has been derived primarily from the study of fossils of ancient human species discovered in Africa and elsewhere and the analysis of the DNA of modern humans. Sub-Saharan Africans have been found to be more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world put together, and this is what gives further credence to the idea of Africa as the cradle of mankind.  

Scientists advance further that from Africa Homo sapiens dispersed to different regions of the globe some 200,000 years ago, undergoing changes in aspects of their features as they went along, not only through interbreeding with archaic species in our common family tree, such as the Denisovans and Neanderthals, but also through such external influences as climate variations, environment, diet, exposure to pathogens and diseases, and so on.

And so the current scientific position, based on the above hypothesis, is that Africa is the cradle of humankind; and the common ancestor of modern man is black African. It has been established further that all modern humans share 99.9% of genetic makeup. The implication then is that no matter your skin colour or racial makeup, you are cousin to all other humans on earth, including members of the black race.

And yet, despite all this, people of black African descent have borne the brunt of prejudice, bigotry and discrimination across all climes—although they are by no means the only ones who complain of mistreatment. Indigenous communities in the Americas, aboriginal and first nation populations in the Pacific region, the Roma in Europe, and low-caste families in the Hindu communities of Asia, among others, do also complain of similar abuses. Nor can the genocidal extermination of six million Jews in Europe during World War II (along with millions of others such as Gipsies, homosexuals and Slavs) be ever erased from man’s collective consciousness.

That said, it is undoubtedly the case that black Africans and Afro-descendants in the diaspora (as well as all others who look like them in colour and/or features irrespective of where they live) are the most discriminated clan of people on earth, discriminated by almost all other racial groups on the planet, if the daily news stories—from across North and South America, from Asia, Australasia, Europe, and from time to time even from within the continent of Africa itself—are anything to go by.

Such discriminations are often very subtle, but can also be blatant and unashamed such as when a black person is called a monkey, either through gestures, chants or in plain language—which for the God-fearing, is nothing short of an insult to the very Creator who fashioned him and attired him in a black outer skin. Sometimes the discrimination is by ignorant bigots, other times it is institutional or structural in character and is effected through such diverse forms as segregation, over-policing, police brutality, mass incarceration, unfair judicial systems, etc., etc.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: The systematic and wholesale discrimination, humiliation and exploitation of blacks by Europeans began and attained their climax with, and were epitomized by, the trans-Atlantic slave trade of old. This trade in African slaves was one of the most abhorrent of practices associated with Europeans. It was carried out along almost the entire Atlantic coast of tropical Africa, from Senegal and the Gambia in West Africa to present-day Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola in southern Africa. It was not as if there was an ongoing war for superiority and war prisoners were being made of the opposing side and forced into slavery, which in those old times would have been a perfectly legitimate way of handling war prisoners in the absence of our modern-day laws of war. Instead we had a superior power coming out of its habitat, into another region of the globe, to more or less pounce on helpless, vulnerable people by whatever means and ship them elsewhere as merchant cargo. Some of the slaves were snatched by the Europeans themselves through direct coastal raids; others were captives of inter-tribal wars some of which had been fomented by the Europeans through their connections with powerful Africans slavers, chiefs or with others they had corrupted with their nefarious plans.

There are discrepancies in dates and figures but it is reasonably estimated that more than 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported between the 16th and 19th centuries, specifically from around 1515 right until 1866. More than 10.5 million of this human cargo could have safely arrived in North America, the Caribbean and South America as slaves. Others succumbed en route, some two million of them, and were disposed of overboard. Millions more died on the African continent in slave raids, during the inter-tribal slave wars, while being transported on foot to the African coast from the hinterland, or while being held at the coast awaiting shipment. Still more died even on arrival at their destination through diseases, overwork, during slave revolts, and so on.

It was not until the beginning of the 19th century (or a little earlier) that the West came to its senses and took steps to abolish the barbaric trade, beginning with Denmark. Different countries outlawed it at different times, and in 1888, Brazil (a Portuguese colony) became the last country to bring an end to slavery. And although slaveholders from some of these countries were handsomely compensated by their European governments, none of the freed slaves were. These were innocent men, women and children, many of whom had been branded, beaten, raped, overworked, brutalized, dehumanized and sometimes even killed by their white masters. There was little accountability back then. If this had happened today, it would of course have been labelled a crime against humanity.

Arab involvement: We have focused so far on the role of Europeans in the trade in African slaves. But Europeans (who mostly belonged to the Christian religious persuasion) were not the only ones involved in the barbaric trade. Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East were also knee deep in their own slave trade. It was not as intense as the trans-Atlantic slave trade by any means, but it went on for much longer—for at least 10 centuries, from the 9th to the 19th century—and would likely supersede the European trade in total volume. The practice of slavery itself continued within Islamic countries even into modern times and was only gradually suppressed under pressure from Western nations. For example, it was not until 1924 that slavery was abolished in Muslim Sudan; in Qatar it was in 1952, in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in 1962, and in Oman in 1970. Although the practice was abolished late in Mauritania, in 1981—the last country in the world to do so—it was only in 2007 that criminal laws were passed to enforce it. Even so, the evidence shows that a huge number of black Africans continue to live in de facto slavery in that country under their Arab masters even today.

It is estimated that some 17 million African slaves were transported to Arab and Muslim lands, the majority